Blog Index

This week’s main blog discussions include … Invisible banking is the place to be A couple of headlines hit me recently. The first is that twitter is going to create a payments system: Twitter has begun applying for regulatory licences across the US and designing the software required to introduce payments across the social media…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Will Silicon Valley Bank kill the FinTech industry? “When you’re not working, what do you do to de-stress?” was the last question Greg Becker, CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)*, took at an investor conference on Tuesday last week. “Cycling is my advice,” he replied. Three days later…

This week’s main blog discussions include … What’s hot and what’s not in FinTech? I just picked up a long and fascinating article on TechCrunch this week. Unfortunately it’s behind a paywall, but they interview seven leading VC investors in FinTech and asked a whole variety of questions: Many people are calling this a downturn….

This week’s main blog discussions include … Most banks will disappear (Part One) Five years ago, Gartner published a report stating that 80 percent of financial institutions would disappear by 2030. Most banks will be made irrelevant by 2030 – Gartner Within 12 years’ time, 80% of financial firms will either go out of business…

This week’s blog discussions included … What has the government ever done for us? It made me smile when watching Billions during an exchange between Chuck Rhoades (the Attorney General) and a bitcoin miner in Episode 1 of Series 5 (nerdy). Bitcoin miner: “What’s the dollar backed by, since we went off the gold standard?”…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Why the 1% will always be the 1% There’s that line in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others It always makes me feel slightly uncomfortable, as it would be nice if we had an egalitarian world where everyone…

This week’s main blog headlines include … This week’s FU! A singing quizmaster, naked customers, another UK exit on the horizon, silver foxes in the hen house plus more fintech fun and banking banter about the biggest news stories of the week. A few show notes here:-  Our resident Judge, Mary, was back in the…

This week’s main blog discussions include … FinTech in Africa: the State of the Nations I got this excellent update from FT Partners and felt compelled to share. What it should make you realise is that African Nations are leap-frogging the world. Enjoy! Executive Summary: FinTech is rapidly spreading into Africa. As mobile proliferation and…

Highlights and links This week’s Guest Judge (and numbers nerd) Wasim Mushtaq former Transformation Lead, Financial Markets at Standard Chartered Bank, provided full transparency of his bespoke scoring system he applied – find out how our participants fared while they spoke about Amazon, Swift, Stripe, The White Stripes, Monzo, Musk, Karaoke, Iran, Russia, Zopa and lots more…

This week’s main blog discussions include … ISO 20022 … or is it ISO 20023 … 20024 … 20025? Anyone who has attended a Sibos conference or similar payments meeting will have heard the buzz about ISO 20022 for years. The idea is that this will unite the global banking industry with a new standard…